


Be as blest as thou can bear

by harborshore



Category: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 23:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13042254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: Five times Fanny Price said no.Title by Alexander Pope.





	Be as blest as thou can bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blueinkedfrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueinkedfrost/gifts).



1.

When told she must leave her family and travel somewhere unknown, the very core of Fanny Price’s soul cried out in rejection and bewilderment, but she didn’t say anything to her parents, or to her sisters, or even to William, who himself was rather angry and upset at the thought of losing his favourite sister. No, Fanny didn’t speak of her feelings, but cried, when left alone at last, her tears staining her shawl. Not for small Fanny was a free expression of emotions, particularly not when she knew how great a relief it would be to her parents to have one less mouth to feed. She didn’t want to leave, but she would.

2.

Dropping a glass bowl Lady Bertram had asked her to fetch, its weight and shape too cumbersome for her small hands, Fanny backed up in the corridor and gasped “No,” quiet and filled with horror. To her astonishment, the glass lit up with an ethereal glow and crept back together, quietly enough to draw no attention at all. She was left with a bowl as whole and lovely as before, not a single crack visible to the naked eye. Touching it in astonishment, she attempted to lift it again, and found it much lighter than the first time. She carried it to her aunt, who gestured at the side table and smiled when Fanny placed it there, pronouncing it “Just right”. 

Even careful Fanny couldn’t leave such a discovery alone. At first she was terrified, magic not being something well thought of among the best families, but she quickly found her magic was as gentle as her personality already was, and was delighted with the little games she could contrive for herself, and the ways she could use it to make the right things easier at Mansfield Park. The spit in the kitchen became much less heavy to turn for the cook, for example, and she could clean up scrapes and sores acquired by the servants, who were the only ones who noticed the change in Fanny. She was determined never to use it to ease her own way, for that would surely be the beginning of something detrimental to her character (there were many stories about magic making its wielder into someone less moral than they used to be). 

However, she was sorely tempted to use it to sabotage the theatre, when that became an issue, but never did, because it was evident that not even ruining their stage would deter the eager actors. As such, she had no other recourse than to keep saying no when they pleaded and remonstrated with her to participate. Her relief when Sir Thomas returned was considerable, for here was someone whose place it was to say no in a way that could not be ignored. At that moment, she felt herself free to ruin the stitchings and the construction already performed, even though destruction did not come easy to her magic. The dismantling of the theatre thus came much easier than expected to the servants who came in to do it, which was a very happy thought to Fanny, who had been very upset by the thought of honest labor being put to such a practice, both of constructing it and of taking it down. 

3\. 

Over the years at Mansfield Park, she made many attempts to say no to comforts created for her by Edmund, because she could not avoid the feeling that she was depriving someone else of them, or that they were too much for her. But he was persistent, even as Fanny shrank from the offered horse, or the encouragement to walk, or anything at all that made her days easier. 

4\. 

To Henry. Over and over, in her own mind, to Sir Thomas, to Mary and to Henry himself. In words, by the look on her face, and through the refusal to answer any of his seeking glances or gestures with the encouragement so plainly sought. It ought to have been a lot for a gentle soul like Fanny’s to maintain such steady rejection, and she felt the disappointment of those around her keenly, but ultimately it wasn’t difficult, for she was that certain of their incompatibility and of Henry’s unsteady character. 

5\. 

There was a concerted attack from Faerie in the second year of Fanny’s and Edmund’s marriage. She woke early on the first of May, feeling the mounting pressure in her head and wondered at it, but thought she may have overdone it during their just-passed weekend at Mansfield, when there had been enough people to fatigue her, particularly considering she was with child, which seemed to make her usual exhaustion worse. Emerging into their garden, she could feel that the pressure was not within her at all, but without, and steadily rising from all around. Her garden was shining with frost out of season, and there was something creeping at the edge of her vision. It was large, larger than anything Fanny had ever seen, perhaps most akin to the docks at Portsmouth, the machine works there. But she thought it was probably larger even than that, and her mind threatened to crack under the pressure, pushing her down to her knees in the soil, cold soaking into her dress. 

“No,” said Fanny Price, digging her fingers into the soil, her soil, that she had tended for so many hours, coaxing flowers and growth out of it under the nose of her disapproving gardener who didn’t like being out of a job. 

“No,” she said again, and the frost began to melt, only to spring back again with renewed force. She grit her teeth, feeling her child move worriedly within her, and hoped very much that nothing she was about to do was a danger to her (for she already knew who it was, a soft word spoken in her ear, a name ringing clear as a bell, since when she first understood which condition she was in). 

“No,” she said, a third time, and she felt the word ring out into the air, more clearly than she had ever spoken it before, steady and strong, reverberating further and further, taking most of her strength with it, so that she only just managed to say on her knees, breathing hard, feeling the little ball of light beneath her breastbone turn and turn and flicker, but not go out.

The frost began to melt, and the pressure wilted, as if it had not expected the resistance. She could feel something disgruntled, something wary, and the horrible thing at the edge of her vision disappeared with the light of the summer sun. 

And that is how Fanny Price saved all of England from being taken over by Faerie, though no one would ever know.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Be as blest as thou can bear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13776603) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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